Insulation wool is being used for insulating e.g. houses in order to reduce energy loss. Insulation wool is a material comprising a lot of air and in order to save space both when transporting and storing it is an advantage to compress the material before packaging. This is of course not only an advantage when it comes to insulation wool, but also other material comprising air, such as foam e.g. used in furniture, e.g. in mattresses, could be compressed to save space.
It is known to stack and compress compressible products, such as insulation wool, in the same process. When a lot of wool pieces are to be stacked before being compressed and packed, a quite high tower is needed in order to stabilize and fixate the pieces before and during compressing; this problem limits the number of wool pieces which can be stacked. A limitation of prior art is that the height of the piling tower limits the number of insulation wool pieces that can be stacked in one batch of piled pieces.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,953,344 describes a method of compressing glass fibre insulation batts or pieces and this is done using compression plates having a concave surface. The concave surface ensures that the batts can be compressed in a higher degree without damaging the batts. In this method the height of the apparatus limits how many batts a stack can consist of.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,908,539 describes an apparatus for stacking and compressing pieces or batts of compressible material and after a compression plate has compressed batts of compressible material the batts are pushed laterally out of the stacking chamber and into a bagging machine. In this method the height of the apparatus limits how many batts a stack can consist of.
CA 952 495 describes a machine for stacking flexible material, where two stacking plates are in turns stacking material into batches. Plates define sidewalls of the machine ensuring that the material is aligned, and further an opening is provided at the bottom allowing a stacking plate to slide out between batches and be moved upwards for starting compression of further material into batches. A problem with this machine is, that because of the predefined position of the opening where a plate can slide out, limitations are introduced as to how much a specific material can be compressed and as to in which dimensions batches can be made.